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Wired up warriors

Communication is key to any battlefield, and for years the US military have used phones built by their Canadian partners at Blackberry – presumably for the encrypted messaging system that makes it such a hit with criminals, rioters and other tech-savvy businesses interested in controlling their communication channels.

Now the US military has opened their contracts to other operating systems and have approved the Galaxy 4S, Blackberry 10 and iOS 6 devices for use by their personnel. The Department of Defence currently has more than 600,000 commercial mobile devices in operational and pilot use, including 470,000 Blackberries, 41,000 Apple devices, and 8,700 Android devices.

We’d like to design a test schedule for your phones to ascertain their level of suitability for deployment on the battlefields of the world. What would they include? Explosions, immersion, impact resistance to 87 tonne tanks? Ideas please.